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Thursday, June 14, 2012

"Who Told You You Were Naked?" The Dishonest Memorials to the Convention

There are two pressing questions for the 2012 convention of the Minnesota South District meeting this week in Saint Paul: Does the convention approve of what the Board of Directors has done in attempting to sell the campus ministry in Minneapolis? Or does the convention wish to make that decision themselves?

So why is there no memorial in workbook that asks these two simple questions? Why hide from your own pastors and congregations? Why are the president and directors of the district going to such great lengths to avoid direct accountability to the pastors and congregations which they serve?

And why are they hiding behind dishonest memorials such as 5-01 and 3-04?

In an earlier post we detailed the unfortunate treatment of the president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod by the president and directors of the Minnesota South District:

President Harrison of the LCMS, after stating clearly his objection to the sale of the campus ministry at the University of Minnesota, was used by the president and directors of the Minnesota South District as an exhibit in court to support their actions, which Harrison had clearly condemned.

And now the officers and directors of the Minnesota South District are trying to do the same thing to their voting members. Resolution 5-01, among others, is asking the convention to ratify the directors attempted sale of the Minneapolis campus ministry, but without explicitly stating this as the intention of the resolution. In the same way that they used President Harrison's letter to dishonestly claim support for what they had done, if Resolution 5-01 or anything like it passes, they will use it as an exhibit in court to claim that their attempted sale of the campus ministry was approved by the convention.

This is just wrong. If the directors believe what they claim, that they have to right to sell the Minneapolis campus ministry without the convention, no action by the convention is needed.

The voting members in convention should reject memorials like 5-01, 3-04, and any other resolutions that does not do exactly what the directors should have done: bring the question of the sale of the campus ministry properties to their pastors and congregations in convention.

God asked Adam in Genesis 3:11 “Who told you that you were naked?" Those who proposed these memorials meant well by them, but like President Harrison, they are being used by the president and directors of the district to do something wrong. They have become fig leaves, cobbled together to cover the shame of something sinful, wrong and evil.

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A blog dedicated to the significant and timely issues related to the Friends of University Lutheran Chapel, Minneapolis, Minnesota. What you see here is an outgrowth and continuation of two other sites, http://www.2Realms.com and http://www.FriendsOfULC.org.